Figure 5.

A schematic of how arousal-biased competition influences memory consolidation. (A) In an initial low-arousal encounter with two apples, one has higher priority than the other for either bottom-up or top-down reasons. After the passage of time and memory consolidation, memory representations for both apples have faded, but the initially higher priority apple has a stronger representation that is more easily and vividly retrieved than that of the lower priority apple. (B) Experiencing arousal while processing two stimuli in competition with each other for mental resources leads to even more enhancement in memory consolidation for the “winner” and impairment for the “loser,” creating a “winner-take-more” effect in memory consolidation.